ECHA Shortlisted over 200 Substances for Possible Regulatory Actions

236 substances were selected by ECHA for further scrutiny by the Member State competent authorities in its annual screening exercise.The competent authorities will carry out a manual examination of dossiers they prioritise to decide whether regulatory action is needed.

If a company has registered one of the substances now shortlisted, it will receive a letter from ECHAinforming it of the potential examination of registration. ECHA encourages relevant enterprises to update their dossiers to address any shortcomings as soon as possible. This is because up-to-date information will help the Member State authorities better assess if regulatory action is needed.

If the Member States or ECHA take actions on one substance, this information will be published on the Agency’s website, for example, in the list of substances potentially subject to compliance checks, the Registry of Intentions (RoI), the draft CoRAP for substance evaluation, or the Public Activities Coordination Tool (PACT). Relevant enterprises may check the status of the substance through the Search for chemicals functionality available on ECHA’s homepage. ECHA does not make the list of shortlisted substances public as it is based on automated selection and manual verification is needed to confirm a potential concern.

How substances are selected for the shortlist

The selection is mostly based on an approach where groups are created around substances with suspected or known concerns, such as those on the Community rolling action plan (CoRAP) for substance evaluation or on the Candidate List of substances of very high concern (SVHCs). Substances are selected to the groups based on read-across arguments and categories available in registration dossiers or categories used in other regulatory programmes (e.g. OECD), as well as structural similarity.

Addressing substances in groups will make sure similar substances are treated consistently. The grouping extends beyond the REACH registered substances and the current shortlist includes 40 substances notified to the C&L Inventory, as well as the 39 group seeds (substances with suspected or know concerns) included on the CoRAP or Candidate List, and therefore already being looked at.

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